July 23, 1998.
Night.
Route 12, on the outskirts of the Arklay Mountains.
Rain hammered the rusted sheet-metal canopy of a rundown gas station with a deafening rattle.
Water leaked through one corner of the convenience store, murky drops striking a plastic bucket on the floor in a steady rhythm.
An aging CRT television hung above and to one side of the register, its picture crawling with static and jumping every few seconds.
Chuck, the old man who ran the station, was sprawled in a canvas chair with half a can of lukewarm beer in one hand.
Beside him stood a trucker taking shelter from the rain, head lowered as he lit a cigarette.
Both men were glued to the screen.
The sports channel was replaying the Detroit final of WSM—World’s Strongest Man—from a few days earlier.
“Two hundred and sixty kilos, and they call that the world’s strongest man?” Chuck took a hard pull from his beer and jabbed a finger at the television.
“TV will sell any kind of bullshit for ratings these days.” “Chuck, this is the WSM final.
It’s an official competition.” The trucker blew out a ring of smoke.
“Look at the thighs on that Nordic bastard.
They’re thicker than your waist.
You don’t believe me, go try lifting a two-hundred-kilo log.” The announcer’s voice cracked through the speakers in a frenzy of shouting, mixed with the shrill hiss of electrical interference.
Onscreen, a shirtless Nordic strongman pounded his chest and roared into the camera.
Then the broadcast abruptly cut to the competitors’ entrance.
“Oh, come on.
What circus did this clown crawl out of?” Chuck laughed, pointing at the screen.
A man stepped into view.
He stood close to two meters tall, with shoulders so broad they stretched an oversized gray tracksuit taut across his frame.
Yet he had covered his entire face with a cheap red wrestling mask that looked like it had cost ten dollars at a roadside stall, leaving only his eyes exposed.
The trucker said nothing.
His brow furrowed.
Something about the live audio from the arena had changed.
Tens of thousands of spectators erupted into a storm of boos.
The masked man ignored them completely and strode to the center of the floor.
No squat warm-up.
No chalk on his hands.
He simply turned toward the judges, gestured at the enormous solid-steel log on the floor, then raised both palms upward.
More weight.
A graphic immediately appeared at the bottom of the broadcast showing the load he had requested: 800 KG.
“Pffft—!” Chuck sprayed beer all over the counter.
“Eight hundred kilos?
Even a huge alligator doesn’t weigh that much!
What does he think he is, a hydraulic jack?” “Shut up and watch.” The trucker crushed his cigarette into the ashtray.
Onscreen, several staff members scrambled over with a hydraulic forklift.
Row after row of dense black plates were locked onto both ends of the log until the apparatus looked less like sports equipment and more like a small industrial boiler.
The masked man stepped forward, dipped into a shallow squat, and wrapped both hands around the metal handles beneath the log.
The fabric along the outside of his thighs tore with a sharp riiip as eight hundred kilograms of solid steel rose cleanly off the floor.
Boom.
The microphones captured the log slamming onto his shoulders with brutal clarity.
Then, without bending his knees for drive, the muscles in his arms swelled violently.
He pressed the eight-hundred-kilo mass straight overhead through sheer, brutally linear force.
Arms fully extended.
Elbows locked.
The jeering vanished as though someone had cut the sound.
Detroit’s entire stadium fell silent.
Chuck’s mouth hung open.
His beer can slipped from his hand, spilling pale yellow liquid across the floor.
CLANG!
A heavy impact sounded from the television; someone at the broadcast desk had apparently knocked a microphone onto the table in shock.
The picture shifted.
The Nordic prodigy who had just broken the previous record stormed onto the stage, face ashen and twisted with rage and disbelief.
“This is a scam!
You network bastards are screwing with me!” he screamed at the cameras.
Then, flanked by three hulking assistants, he furiously surrounded the masked man.
He refused to believe anyone could lift eight hundred kilograms.
To him, it had to be some stage trick arranged by the organizers to humiliate him and manufacture a headline.
“Rip that mask off him!
I want that goddamn steel tube checked for whatever you’ve stuffed inside it!” The strongman jabbed a finger in the masked man’s face, spraying spit as he shouted.
The three assistants reached straight for the cheap red mask.
The masked man took half a step back, avoiding their thick hands, and rattled off a quick warning.
The Nordic strongman was in no mood to listen.
He lunged forward with the others.
The masked man frowned and lifted his right hand, the fingers exposed by a half-finger glove.
He gave a casual outward swat.
BANG!
Three men whose combined weight approached half a ton—along with the Nordic strongman himself—left the floor at once.
Four massive bodies traced a chaotic arc through the air, flew five or six meters sideways, and crashed through the chalk basin and equipment racks at the edge of the competition floor in an explosion of white powder.
“Holy shit!” The trucker stumbled backward into a shelf.
“He slapped all four of them away?” On the television, the Nordic strongman hauled himself upright.
His world-champion pride had just been crushed in public.
Eyes bloodshot, he yanked a small-caliber defensive pistol from one of his assistants and aimed it at the masked man’s broad back.
Muzzle flashes strobed.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
The bullets struck the man’s back, punching several holes through the gray tracksuit.
His body jerked sharply.
At that exact moment, he had bent down and picked up the Atlas stone for the next event—a solid concrete sphere weighing one hundred and sixty kilograms.
The instant the bullets hit, his body twisted on reflex.
His hands shoved forward with the motion, and the stone tore through the air with a deep, ugly rush before flying more than ten meters.
Crack.
Even through the television speakers, the sound made the scalp crawl.
The Atlas stone struck the Nordic strongman square in the abdomen.
His midsection collapsed into a deep crater, folding his body into a V before launching him out of the competition area.
He hit the concrete and never moved again.
The broadcast cut immediately to color bars.
Chuck slapped his thigh.
“Fake!
Absolutely fake!
It’s a ratings stunt!
That steel thing and the stone were hollow foam!
And now they’re shooting at each other?
Special effects are getting lazier every year!” The words had barely left his mouth.
VROOOOM— A savage engine roar tore through the curtain of rain outside.
Chuck and the trucker turned at the same time and stared through the windows.
A towering Ford Raptor pickup, its doors plastered with gaudy WSM WORLD CHAMPION graphics, blasted through the standing water and threw spray two meters into the air.
Without slowing, it barreled deeper into the Arklay Mountains.
Its red taillights were swallowed by the storm within seconds.
…
Inside the pickup.
The wipers thrashed furiously, their monotonous scrape-scrape filling the cab.
Leon S.
Kennedy held the thick steering wheel with one hand.
With the other, he reached behind himself and felt through his short-sleeved T-shirt at the small scabs below his shoulder blade.
Careless.
Leon sighed and kept his eyes on the road.
Those shots had come out of nowhere.
Fortunately, years of heavy core resistance work had built his lats and traps thick enough that, once the bullets pierced the skin, his muscles reflexively clamped down around them before they could reach anything vital.
At the Detroit hospital, the doctor had shaken his head the entire time he removed the slugs with forceps.
Looking at the X-rays, he insisted that Leon’s back had about the same stopping power as Kevlar and that, if Leon had waited much longer, the wounds might simply have healed on their own.
Thinking back on the competition a few days earlier still left a knot in Leon’s chest.
He had just graduated from the police academy, and his assignment orders still hadn’t come through.
He had entered the competition for one reason: the first-place prize, this top-of-the-line sponsor-provided pickup.
If he won it, he’d have something to drive to work.
To keep his academy instructors from finding out he’d secretly entered a commercial strongman event, he had even bought a wrestling mask from a roadside stall to hide his face.
How was he supposed to know the guy would be such a sore loser that he’d pull a gun?
Even if you shoot me, I can’t exactly fold you in half for real.
Leon thumped the steering wheel, his brows drawing tight.
When he’d been shot in the back, his body had reacted on pure resistance-training instinct.
The Atlas stone had simply gone out with the motion.
He genuinely hadn’t meant to kill the man—he hadn’t even used his full strength.
The guy’s lumbar spine had just been ridiculously fragile.
Detroit SWAT had surrounded the venue within moments.
Leon had sat on the competition floor staring at the blood on his hands and thinking it was all over: forget becoming a cop, he might spend the rest of his life in federal prison.
Then he was taken to an interrogation room at Detroit PD, and two lawyers in immaculate suits walked through the door.
The lead attorney wasted no time.
He pushed a bulky satellite phone across the table toward Leon.
“Mr.
Kennedy.
Someone would like to speak with you.” Leon picked up the phone.
“Leon S.
Kennedy.” The voice on the other end was low and controlled, carrying the effortless authority of someone accustomed to being obeyed.
“This is Albert Wesker, captain of S.T.A.R.S.
at the Raccoon City Police Department.” “Yes, sir.” Leon instinctively straightened in the interrogation chair.
“I used excessive force in self-defense.
Is the man dead?” “He is.
But you bear no legal responsibility.” Wesker’s voice remained perfectly level.
“The man was an extremely dangerous suspect wanted by Interpol.
Counterterrorism has taken control of the scene.
The gun he carried is evidence enough.” “A terrorist?” Leon froze.
“At a strongman competition?” “Extremists often choose unexpected covers,” Wesker replied coolly.
“Detroit police intended to hold you for an extended period of isolated review.
I used personal connections to have you released.
You are free to go.” “Sir…” Warmth surged through Leon’s chest and tightened his throat.
“I just wanted to win a truck.
I never meant to cause this much trouble.
You actually stepped in for a rookie who hasn’t even started the job yet?” “S.T.A.R.S.
has always valued talent.” A trace of approval entered Wesker’s voice.
“I’ve reviewed your medical examination and the footage from the arena.
Your physical capabilities are extraordinarily rare.” “I just do a few extra sets of squats.” Leon scratched his head, a little embarrassed.
“Mostly useless gym muscle.” “Raccoon City has use for that kind of brute strength.” Wesker paused.
“We’re short on personnel.
I’ve decided to recruit you directly into S.T.A.R.S.
Effective immediately.
Any objections?” Skip the years of grinding it out as a patrol officer and go straight into an elite tactical unit?
Leon felt his blood surge.
Captain Wesker not only got me out of this mess, he’s handing me a secure job on top of it?
The man’s practically justice incarnate.
A perfect mentor dropped into my life!
“Sir, I won’t let you down!” Leon promised loudly into the phone.
“Give me the dirty jobs, the heavy jobs, whatever you’ve got.
My endurance is good—I can do the work of several men!” “Excellent.
The five-hundred-thousand-dollar prize money has already been deposited in your account.
Your vehicle is waiting outside as well.” “Sir, I can’t take the five hundred thousand.” Leon hurried to cut in.
“The guy may have been a criminal, but I still killed him by accident.
Please transfer the money to his family.
Call it compensation.
It’ll sit better on my conscience.
I only need the truck to get around.” Silence came from the other end.
A full three seconds passed.
“…Very well.” When Wesker spoke again, his cadence had noticeably slowed.
For some reason, his deep voice sounded almost relieved—there might even have been the faintest hidden smile in it.
“I will personally make sure that…
transfer is handled appropriately.
You are a very generous young man, Kennedy.
The department appreciates that kind of selflessness.” “Thank you, sir!” “Your assignment will become official shortly.
Before that, however, I need you to perform a cleanup operation deep in the Arklay Mountains.” “Where?” “Near the edge of the Arklay Mountains is an old chemical plant abandoned twenty years ago.” Wesker’s tone hardened into brisk professionalism.
“Our latest intelligence indicates that associates of the extremist you killed are using it as a base.
Kennedy, I want you to act as S.T.A.R.S.’ advance scout.
Your individual survival capability is exceptional.
Go in first, reconnoiter the site, and eliminate every one of those ‘drugged-up lunatics.’ This is a top-secret counterterrorism operation.
Local law enforcement cannot be alerted.” “Understood, sir!
I’ll treat it as field training before I report for duty!” Leon gripped the phone tighter.
“If those terrorists are carrying guns, I won’t hold back.
I guarantee the site will be cleared!” The call ended.
Remembering Wesker’s steady, forceful voice, Leon couldn’t keep the corners of his mouth from lifting.
You could hear it in his voice—he’s the kind of boss who protects his people and goes all-out for his subordinates.
Bet he even looks like a straight-arrow officer.
He pulled me up when I was at rock bottom.
Once I join the unit, I’ll have to work twice as hard to pay him back.
Leon’s peripheral vision caught the rearview mirror, reflecting the pickup’s spacious back seat.
A set of pitch-black heavy armor stood silently behind him.
The sponsor had commissioned it as a custom championship gift.
Calling it armor was generous; in practice, it was an absurdly overbuilt weighted training suit.
The base was the liner of a heavy black bomb-disposal suit.
Leon had removed the ballistic inserts long ago and replaced them with solid high-carbon-steel plates he had cut and ground himself purely to add weight.
They had no body-contouring curves at all—just flat, brutally heavy slabs of industrial steel.
Thick black industrial nylon straps cinched the plates tightly against the bomb suit.
The largest chest plate had 25 KG crudely spray-painted across it in white.
With the shoulder and leg plates included, the full set weighed one hundred and fifty kilograms.
The helmet was even more ridiculous.
It was essentially a solid black iron skull turned upside down over his head.
To add load to his neck, a thick curved steel plate had been crudely welded over the face, with 20 KG painted across it.
There were no glass goggles, only a narrow horizontal viewing slit at eye level.
Running in it meant barely being able to see while twenty kilograms of dead weight crushed down on his cervical spine.
It was a piece of pure torture masquerading as training equipment.
Beside the armor, stretched across the floor, lay an absurdly oversized black greatsword.
That was the sponsor’s actual “core-training apparatus.” Calling it a blade was almost misleading.
It was far too heavy.
The thing measured 1.8 meters end to end.
Its body was a full palm thick, uniformly black, completely unsharpened, with hard right-angle edges.
It was less a sword than a massive steel plate someone had roughly cut into the shape of one.
Yellowed white anti-slip athletic tape wrapped the handle.
Stamped into the block of steel along the spine was a line of text: [CUSTOM MADE – 161 KG].
Because its balance was so wildly offset, the misshapen implement was several times more effective than rigid gym machines for training anti-rotation core strength and explosive lat power.
Leon had given it a nickname: the “Doorstop.” His gaze shifted to the map on the passenger seat.
The “abandoned chemical plant” Captain Wesker had designated was about an hour away.
Once he’d cleared out the terrorists and settled in, he could put on the steel suit in back, take the Doorstop for a couple laps through the abandoned plant, and make up today’s cardio.
The weather in the Arklay Mountains was downright cursed.
The rain was so heavy he could barely see the road signs, the pavement was slick with mud, and the off-road tires kept threatening to lose traction.
He was still thinking about it when—THUD!
A heavy impact slammed through the front of the truck.
The multi-ton Ford Raptor actually shuddered from the hit.
Leon’s right foot buried the brake pedal.
The ABS hammered furiously as the oversized off-road tires dragged black water trails across more than ten meters of slick asphalt before the pickup came to a controlled stop.
At that speed, whatever animal I hit can’t possibly still be alive.
Leon unbuckled, grabbed a high-powered flashlight from the passenger seat, and pushed open the door.
Cold rain struck his face and soaked through his gray T-shirt in seconds.
The night wind carried an indescribable carrion stink through the Arklay Mountains, made even sharper by the rain.
He slammed the door behind him and strode around to the front.
The powerful flashlight beam cut through the downpour and swept the road ahead.
A shallow dent had been driven into the pickup’s thick steel crash bar.
A broad smear of dark, viscous blood coated the metal.
Leon followed the trail with his light.
Three meters ahead, something mangled lay sprawled across the asphalt.
It was an enormous Doberman, a full size larger than the breed should have been.
The collision had been catastrophic.
Half its skull had caved in and shattered, splintered bone protruding through torn flesh.
The crash bar had ripped a huge gash through its abdomen, leaving most of its intestines trailing across the flooded roadway, washed pale by the rain.
Leon stopped, brow tightening.
Destroyed brain tissue, massive internal bleeding—nothing could survive injuries like that.
Even out here in the middle of nowhere, accidentally killing a dog left a bad taste in his mouth.
He turned toward the truck, intending to grab a shovel and bury it.
Inside the circle of his flashlight, the heap of ruined flesh suddenly twitched.
Leon’s gaze sharpened.
The Doberman, dragging its intestines with half its head missing, dug its forelegs into the pavement and slowly forced itself upright in a grotesquely twisted posture.
Its one intact eye had rolled almost completely white and stared sightlessly toward the flashlight.
Its shattered jaw hung loose and crooked.
A wet, clicking growl rattled deep in its throat as foul slime mixed with rainwater dripped from its fangs onto the road.
It didn’t run.
Instead, it lowered its front half and gathered itself to pounce.
Leon remained where he was, rain streaming from his chin.
His eyes dropped to the intestine still dragging across the ground, still leaking blood.
Brainstem damaged.
Viscera exposed.
Yet it could stand and remain aggressive.
Mutated rabies?
Pollution in the Arklay Mountains must be worse than I thought.
Rabies has evolved enough to shut off pain now?
Looking at the sick animal baring its teeth and preparing to leap, Leon felt a stab of pity.
With injuries like that, every movement must be agony.
“Wait here a second.” Leon turned, strode back to the pickup, and yanked open the heavy rear door.
His right hand reached inside and closed around the tape-wrapped handle.
His forearm tightened.
The 161-kilogram black-steel greatsword came out of the cab in one easy hand.
Thunk.
He casually rested its tip against the asphalt, punching a shallow divot into the road and splashing muddy water outward.
Dragging the 161-kilogram Doorstop one-handed, Leon walked back around the hood.
Rain streamed over the black steel and washed away traces of chalk left from the competition.
The infected dog seemed to sense its prey approaching.
Its hind legs exploded against the pavement and its body blurred forward, jaws yawning wide and dripping slime as it lunged for Leon’s throat.
It was fast.
To Leon, however, the path of the attack looked almost slow-motion clear.
He didn’t dodge.
He didn’t even move his feet.
His waist turned.
Force traveled up through his spine into his right shoulder.
His wrist snapped over.
The 161-kilogram black-steel greatsword ripped through the rain with a low WHOOOM and rose into the airborne dog in a brutal upward smash.
CRACK—BANG!
One hundred and sixty-one kilograms of dead steel, backed by the momentum of Leon’s swing, crashed into the dog’s ribs and chest.
Its charging body collapsed inward on impact, its spine snapping cleanly in two.
It never even had time to yelp.
Like a baseball caught by a home-run swing, it rocketed backward.
CRASH!
The ruined body flew seventeen or eighteen meters, snapped a roadside sapling as thick as a wrist, and dropped into the brush like wet garbage.
It never moved again.
Only the broken trunk continued to sway faintly in the rain.
Leon let the sword hang naturally at his side.
Not even a smear of blood marked the black steel.
“Sick dogs have some serious tempers these days.
Better to put it out of its misery.
Call that my good deed for the night.” He shook his head and was about to carry the Doorstop back to the truck when an unsettling sound threaded through the rain.
Rustle…
click-click-click…
Paw pads stepping through soaked leaves, accompanied by hollow growls leaking from damaged throats.
Not one animal.
A pack.
Leon stopped and slowly turned, sweeping the flashlight beam across the dark forest on either side of the road.
The light split the rain.
At the edge of the shadows: one pair, two pairs, three…
seven or eight sets of cloudy, corpse-white eyes reflected the beam with an unnatural sheen.
Seven or eight huge Dobermans, their bodies ulcerated and oozing pus, emerged from the undergrowth in stiff, dragging steps.
They spread into a fan that completely blocked the road ahead of the pickup.
The largest had lost the flesh from half its face, exposing bare white bone.
Thick mucus dripped from its jaws as it stared at Leon.
Leon’s fingers tightened slightly around the handle.
So the first one hadn’t been an isolated case.
Whatever strain of rabies was loose in these mountains had spread badly enough to form an entire feral pack.
Careless.
I didn’t even close the truck door.
SKREEE—GRIND— From far deeper in the forest came the violent screech of metal under strain: a heavy train braking hard on steel rails, the scream of metal tearing against metal.
The storm muffled it, but the sound was powerful enough to make the ground tremble faintly beneath Leon’s boots.
A train?
There’s a passenger line out here in the middle of nowhere?
Leon looked from the advancing pack of diseased mutant dogs to the direction of the noise.
His wrist slowly rolled around the sword grip, veins rising one by one across the back of his hand.
“Captain said terrorists were operating around here.” Since I’m already here, I might as well clear out a public-safety hazard before I even report for duty.